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Voice 21 - The national oracy education charity

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Spoken language skills are one of the strongest predictors of a child’s future life chances but too many children are not given the opportunity to develop these crucial skills. This is why a high-quality oracy education matters to all students.

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The English-Speaking Union has been discovering voices for 100 years.

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The ESU is a charity that supports young people to build the speaking and listening skills they need to thrive in a changing world.

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https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2023

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Elklan communication chain activity cards

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Elklan communication chain activity cards

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Voice 21 - The national oracy education charity

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The national curriculum for England to be taught in all local-authority-maintained schools.

The national curriculum sets out the programmes of study and attainment targets for all subjects at all 4 key stages.

All local-authority-maintained schools in England must teach these programmes of study.

The majority of this national curriculum was introduced in September 2014, with English and maths coming into force for all year groups from September 2016.

The exception is the science curriculum which came into force for year 10 pupils in September 2016, and applies to year 11 pupils from September 2017.

See the National Archives website for information about the pre-2014 primary and secondary curriculums.

Curriculum by key stages

The complete framework and individual versions of the curriculum for primary and secondary key stages.

Programmes of study by subject

Individual programmes of study and attainment targets for key stages 1 to 4.

Other curriculum subjects

Curriculum interviews

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The national curriculum for England to be taught in all local-authority-maintained schools.

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Private talk, public conversation article

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Private talk, public conversation article

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Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority

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Sustained Shared Thinking overview

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Speech and Language UK: Changing young lives

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Join the biggest ever show and tell!
No Pens Day is a chance for children to have fun raising valuable funds for Speech and Language UK while learning about children who struggle with talking and understanding words.
Children in participating schools can get involved in a day of talking and listening activities - beginning with the biggest ever show and tell.

To take part, each child brings in £1, which is donated to Speech and Language UK.

As well as raising money, No Pens Day also raises awareness about the 1.9 million children who struggle with talking and understanding words, and the work we are doing to support them.
No Pens Day 2023 takes place on Wednesday 29th November 2023 To make it as easy as possible for you and your class to have the best time ever, we'll provide all the resources you need to plan your day - including tons of activity ideas, take home leaflets, certificates, lesson plans and more! . Thank you so much for your interest in No Pens Day. We hope you'll join in the fun.
To sign up your school to take part in No Pens Day, simply click below. We'll send you a free Classroom Pack containing everything you need to know to make the day a success.

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No Pens Day: Join the biggest ever show and tell!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
No Pens Day is a chance for children to have fun raising valuable funds for Speech and Language UK while learning about children who struggle with talking and understanding words. Children in participating schools can get involved in a day of talking and listening activities - beginning with the biggest ever show and tell.

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Here we gather together tasks and articles which help will support teachers in helping learners reason for different purposes and in different ways, and to get better at reasoning.

Reasoning is fundamental to knowing and doing mathematics but when do we reason, what does reasoning 'look like' and how can we help children get better at it? This feature is in two parts:

The first article and accompanying selection of tasks offer opportunities for learners to reason for different purposes and in different ways.

The second article and accompanying tasks offer support in helping learners become expert reasoners.

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Here we gather together tasks and articles which help will support teachers in helping learners reason for different purposes and in different ways, and to get better at reasoning. Reasoning is fundamental to knowing and doing mathematics but when do we reason, what does reasoning 'look like' and how can we help children get better at it?

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Sustained Shared Thinking overview

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Collaboration amongst students is central to the programme. There is considerable evidence to indicate dialogic learning raises students' levels of achievement. Studies consistently show benefits to learning when compared to classes where the students study individually.

In line with the research, the trials of the programme revealed that students could learn from one another and were less reliant on the teacher as the 'source of all knowledge'. Many students developed a 'can do' attitude towards mathematics.

Through participating in the programme, teachers develop a range of interrelated pedagogies that promote dialogic learning in the classroom.

Teacher strategies to promote dialogic learning

Five key pedagogies

These teacher strategies seek to foster joint learning through student dialogue characterized by five dimensions:

Challenges for teachers

From the trials, we found teachers had pressing concerns about a number of aspects of dialogic learning, these are listed below. These very real concerns are explicitly addressed throughout the programme.

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Collaboration amongst students is central to the programme. There is considerable evidence to indicate dialogic learning raises students' levels of achievement. Studies consistently show benefits to learning when compared to classes where the students study individually.

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Easily create surveys and polls to collect customer feedback, measure employee satisfaction, and organize team events.

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Supporting sustained shared thinking in the Early Years (pegs)

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Building a sequenced, coherent, cumulatively sufficient and spiraled curriculum from 3 to 19 is perhaps the most important bet we can place for disadvantaged learners

The world is an increasingly challenging place to be a child; the compounding combination of the pandemic, economic hardship and political uncertainty has exposed and entrenched disadvantage in society; threatening to define and harm a generation. Without stronger leadership and greater action, our legacy may reflect that we did not do enough for those who needed us most.

This think piece explores our best bets for closing the disadvantage gap. Whilst far from exhaustive, it highlights the central and critical role that curriculum (and the enactment of curriculum) needs to play as the key lever; a bet that accumulates advantage year-on-year and is best placed to privilege those who are presently or previously experiencing disadvantage. (and all children)

How ... do we privilege those presently and previously experiencing disadvantage ... (and) apply a lens (to) ask searching questions about what we should value and how we must act. Now is the time to use the expertise and experience across our region to make a discernible difference? from: what if we are the hope and we fail

Placing the curriculum under the disadvantage lens allows much greater specificity in response to this challenge. Identifying the connected best bets that will secure the circumstances and opportunities for children to accumulate advantage in our schools; disproportionately supporting disadvantage learners so that we (upwardly) close the disadvantage gap...

"Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities..." (Malcolm Gladwell)

Successful people are not gifted; they just work hard, then succeed on purpose." (G.K. Nielson)

The curriculum, and particularly what we choose to value, how we structure it and how we enact it, is the key lever and our best bet for disadvantaged learners.This long term investment seeks to secure the irreversible conditions required to achieve attainment mobility for all children and prepare disadvantage to thrive in an uncertain world; placing our chips on curriculum.

The impact of disadvantage on learning is not static. It is a long-term process, not a moment or an event. (Marc Rowland)

Give the golden ticket: As educators what we choose to include and how we sequence and curate the curriculum confers or denies power for our disadvantaged learners. Designing the curriculum as the golden ticket to the world for all children is a weighty ethical responsibility. We must think hard about what is in and what is out; what of all that has been thought, written and said gives the very best chance for disadvantaged children to thrive and have self agency throughout their lives. Not everything is of equal importance; we need to seek deep subject domain expertise to consider, identify and curate the key substantive concepts, disciplinary knowledge and powerful necessary knowledge wrapped together in a well-conceived curriculum; as an ever-onward investment.

Curriculum is all about power. Decisions about what knowledge to teach are an exercise of power and therefore a weighty ethical responsibility. What we choose to teach confers or denies power. (Christine Counsell)

The potential of a progressive, sequenced, cumulatively sequenced Curriculum is our best bet for securing greater...

S ocial justice: The equal access to wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.

Social mobility: The ability of individuals, families or groups to move up or down the social ladder in a society. Social mobility is often used to describe changes in wealth, but it can also be used to describe general social standing or access to education.

Equity: Ensuring that everyone receives what they need to be successful. In short, equality is not enough to combat disadvantage. "While the world in which we live distributes talent equally, it does not equally distribute opportunity,"

...as well as systemically and upwardly closing the disadvantage gap year-on-year.

Think hard about the Conceptual Backbone of the curriculum. Prioritise, as our most important bet, a progressive, cumulatively sufficient curriculum that has a well-conceived conceptual backbone; the key substantive and disciplinary concepts that provide the conceptual fabric and holding baskets (Mary Myatt) for future learning. Weaving vertical threads through subject ropes.

Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative, mental map, or intuitive theory. Disconnected facts in the mind are like unlinked pages on the Web: They might as well not exist. (Stephen Pinker)

We know that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric of the subject. Thinking hard about the conceptual backbone and how this identifies the Big Ideas/Substantive Concepts to be considered through a disciplinary approach, imprints and builds the cognitive architecture. Onto this backbone substantive concepts are thrown into sharp relief and brought to life by judiciously selected necessary, powerful (subject) knowledge, seeding the ground, weaving the nets, creating the Velcro for future learning and for remembering more. Schema sticks knowledge.

It is precisely this schema development, this access to the organising concepts, that is the nurtured gift that advantaged learners bring to our schools as the consequence of experience and supported opportunity over time. It is why the year-on-year progression and securing of the substantive concepts, as threads through the curriculum, is so essential for disadvantaged learners to connect and create conceptual holding baskets for powerful knowledge that self-perpetuates in the future ... creating precisely the Mathew Effect that has given an advantage to advantaged learners from birth (and before).

It is this conceptual architecture, schema and backbone that secures the big ideas, makes sense of and holds necessary, powerful knowledge that develops disciplinary understanding to build historians, authors, mathematicians, geographers, artists... who develop their states of being over time (... and with it their identity, self-esteem, sense of place, agency and belonging).

Concepts are sitting in every part of the curriculum and they cannot be left to chance, because they are acting as holding baskets for a lot of information. (Mary Myatt)

Curriculum as the progression model ; it raises the tide. It is the year-on-year progression through a cumulatively sufficient curriculum that is the biggest opportunity and the best bet for disadvantaged learners to close the gap.

Learning should not only take us somewhere; it should allow us later to go further more easily. (Bruner, 1960)

Constructing and curating the curriculum and the enactment of it is a long term bet that requires a long term investment - it is precisely the coherence and sequence built progressively over time that lifts and raises the tide for all and particularly disadvantaged learners. As educationalists we need to give the capacity, space and time for subject experts to carefully craft, curate and develop curriculum. Children get one chance, one opportunity to experience a coherent, progressive curriculum; incoherence and arbitrary knowledge is leaving the guesswork to chance and children.

The curriculum requires an infinite mindset; one that requires educators to plant trees for the future. The development of curriculum through a child's lens lasts at least from age 3 ( although we also know the first 1001 days from conception is a significant determinant) to age 19 and beyond; approaching two decades. A daunting, yet helpful perspective. If the power of curriculum is its cumulative coherence and sufficiency over time - regular revolution and change of curriculum is detrimental for learners; and particularly disadvantaged learners. (how often has curriculum changed in the last 15 years? how has this lack of continuity and coherence impacted on the progress of disadvantaged learners?)

The curriculum should not be half baked. Random curriculum (or poorly conceived curriculum), can present the prospect of multi-serendipitous findings for advantaged learners to make sense of within their well-connected schema, an opportunity to meander and make meaning. For disadvantaged learners it feels more like a trek into an abstract unknown, poorly structured and sequenced, day on day struggle to work out how this bit fits. This cognitive conflict and dissonance gradually erodes confidence and shifts the blame onto themselves, reaffirming that they do not belong. (Discontinuity and incoherence is damaging for disadvantaged learners; hence the presently widening gap as the impact is not felt evenly).

Stay close to the backbone - its strength is realised over time; it holds, supports and directs the curriculum, but it is an investment that should be viewed in years... decades (resist mission creep into a world of arbitrary knowledge, topics, lists, whims... ). Too much curriculum and teaching steers too far from both the substantive concepts and disciplinary approach to deliver arbitrary knowledge not held by the conceptual/big ideas of the subject or supported through the development of disciplinary knowledge and states of being.

Staying close to the backbone requires teachers to consider less content and to deepen teaching that hangs around on the big ideas, concepts and the judiciously selected necessary knowledge that catalyses and provides the stickier holding baskets for future learning; covering what matters most, better.

Beware the noisy, content heavy, multi-topic curriculum that is bursting with arbitrary knowledge - chasing that which is not worth having (or that which will not stick in the absence of a conceptual backbone or secure holding baskets, or because ultimately much detail is forgotten in the long term).

Arbitrary: based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system 'an arbitrary decision'

Instead judiciously select necessary knowledge that exposes, simplifies and exemplifies the organising concepts and big ideas of our curriculum; think networks of knowledge held by concepts and less about facts and lists. Understanding that it is the substantive concepts and the disciplinary understanding that is the goal of the curriculum, which is brought to life through judiciously selected knowledge; gifting the thrill of insight and knowing more to disadvantaged learners.

Arbitrary knowledge, content and topics selected randomly or as a personal (or historic) whim is kryptonite for disadvantaged learners. Understanding the organising concepts gives the thrill of insight and the 'feeling of being clever' that super-charges curiosity; as disadvantaged become advantaged and see the world differently and are then in turn increasingly motivated to test new experiences and information against their new view of the world. Gifting how subjects are organised and the concepts that define it not only tackles disadvantage in the present, but also into the future within and beyond the subject - setting the type of schema and conceptual awareness that many advantaged learners bring to school.

Subject is King . Curriculum is enacted through the lens of subject. These domains organise and structure our curriculum into distinct realms. Only deep investment over time on how subjects are constructed will provide the insight that teachers need to teach (not present) the substantive concepts, build disciplinary understanding and secure the pertinent and president knowledge that allows pupils to know more, remember more and do more. (understanding that much will be forgotten, but that the organising concepts will live on to allow learners to know what to do when they do not know what to do, throughout their lives). Pushing wide open a door for colleagues to think deeply and celebrate widely the unique aspects of their subject; to get their subject geek on (but not in the undisciplined pursuit of content, but in the underlying structure that is so important to learning).

There is significant 'polymathic' demand on primary teachers and schools. To realise the intention of the new framework and to invest deeply in curriculum and subject requires significant subject domain expertise... unlikely to exist within a single primary. Educators from across 3-19 must work together altruistically across our sector to think hard about and curate accessible and understood subject curricular for teachers (and pupils). Groups of school creating the collaborative structures and subject knowledge expertise to curate curriculum that will disproportionately support those presently experiencing disadvantage.

There is a reverse problem in secondary, where the degree-level expertise tends to lean towards content-heavy curricula that are prone to 'arbitrary' knowledge, whims and a breadth of curriculum that is too noisy and not efficient enough to secure and deepen understanding of the conceptual framework; placing responsibility for drawing connections across subjects with students. For some learners, this autonomy leads to meaning making and mastery and for others the incoherence leads to dislocation and disconnection. We need much greater debate and discussion on what it means to be a teacher of...

Sequence matters; really matters within learning episodes. Learning happens when we think hard and where we can connect new ideas securely into our existing schema. When disadvantaged learners meet new learning in our classrooms they really need it to be enacted in a sequence that is coherent and cumulative. Whilst advantaged learners have cultural capital and developed schema that is more resistant to poorly sequenced learning, disadvantaged learners are much less able to make sense of poor sequence; the curriculum literally becomes out-of-order (and out of reach) for disadvantaged learners if it is enacted out of order.

Disadvantaged learners are likely to have less well developed schema, which makes them far more sensitive to learning that is out of sequence. Given that disadvantaged learners often need to structure and re-structure schema as opposed to accrete or tune schema it really matters the order in which areas are taught. Learners with limited or less stable schema are more likely to reject (fail to resolve cognitive conflict) new learning that is not well sequenced and sensitive to previous knowledge and existing schema.

Sequencing that achieve an hours-worth of learning for an hours-worth of input will close the gap for disadvantaged learners. Typically, disadvantaged learners are far more likely to assume that they alone do not understand when learning/teaching is out of sequence; "that does not make sense, it must be me," compared to advantaged learners who are self-confident enough to recognise poor sequence, "this is a bit odd, but I am confident with what I already know, I'll tolerate the learning and assimilate as I go."

Give Status; Small Moments of Prestige, that say you belong. Disadvantaged learners are more likely to have an external locus of control, to step back and to opt out of learning. Our perceived status drives are sense of belonging, our connectedness, our value and ultimately whether we are part of the game (and entitled to be...). The Pandemic has driven far greater disenfranchisement in education; if you do not see yourself as part of the game, you will opt out and protect yourself from further status harm by playing a different game or cutting losses to avoid playing and failing.

It is easy to forget we have status to give, that it costs nothing and it never runs out. ... Allowing others to feel statusful makes it more likely they'll accept our influence. (Will Storr, 2021)

It's probably not a surprise to discover that feeling deprived of status is a major source of anxiety and depression. When life is a game we're losing, we hurt. ...To our brains, status is a resource as real as oxygen or water. When we lose it, we break. (Will Storr, 2021)

As humans we seek status, typically measuring against those that we are closest to. Classrooms are on-going status games, one that reflects a key aspect of being human.

...our curriculum should whisper to our children, "You belong. You did not come from nowhere. All this came before you, and one day you too might add to it." (Ben Newmark)

Create learning spaces where all children . Without psychological safety we cannot attend to what is to be learnt. Within these spaces how do we gift Small Moments of Prestige and build every learners status, how do we have greater awareness of how we give status and build a fully inclusive space for all and particularly those learners experiencing disadvantage.

To feel a sense of belonging is to feel accepted, to feel seen and to feel included by a group of people... to not feel belonging is to experience the precarious and insecure sense of an outsider. (Owen Eastwood, 2021)

Build schema by weaving (conceptual) nets. Do not presume previous knowledge, weave conceptual nets, stop throwing fish at broken nets. We are the sum of our memories (and opportunities and experiences) over time. This means that each individual is unique; be wary of working to the average. This uniqueness is to be celebrated and yet it provides the wickedest of problems for teaching. Each of us bring a range of schema to our learning; some advanced and deep, others beginning and shallow.

People are not born with fixed reserves of potential; instead potential is an expandable vessel, shaped by the various things we do throughout our lives. Learning isn't a way of reaching one's potential but rather a way of developing it. We can create our own potential." (Anders Ericsson)

Our understanding of the world and our place in it is built over time through the development of schema.

"...our brains do something vastly more impressive, forming neural nets from billions of cells, each connected to thousands of others. And these networks are organized into larger structures, ... and so on, in a complex hierarchical scheme.." (Leonard Mlodinow, 2018)

When we meet new information (and when we are primed to attend to it) we typically do one of four things:

Accretion: Add it into existing schema with little cognitive conflict, like inserting a new puzzle piece into existing puzzle.

Tuning: Tweak and reshape what is already known or understood in light of new insight. The puzzle picture shifts to reveal a new truth or connection.

Restructure or structuring: New information is acquired by thinking hard about it and securing a few connections together that can hold fast. New puzzle under construction (without repeating or see in other contexts, learning likely to be insecure).

Rejection: New information is beyond proximal zone, cannot resolve the cognitive conflict. No puzzle to add too, starting a new puzzle is too abstract or teaching not made the leap to existing puzzles.

Deepening the wicked problem; the importance of the proximal zone a space that is typically narrower for disadvantaged learners. Understanding where children are in their learning and the scope of previous knowledge is particularly important for disadvantaged learners who have much less scope to wrestle with learning that is beyond schema.

Disadvantaged learners typically have less developed schema supported by cultural capital and opportunities and experiences over time. This is not linked to innate ability. Whilst advantaged learners typically spend time in the accreting and tuning space, and within their proximal zone much more often, disadvantaged learners typically spend more time structuring or restructuring, wrestling often beyond the proximal zone to build understanding and retain exemplifying knowledge. Careful structuring of learning episodes to systematically build in the fundamental and foundational concepts and the introduction of 'necessary knowledge' gives a greater chance for cognitive dissonance to be resolved.

"The sweet spot: that productive, uncomfortable terrain located just beyond our current abilities, where our reach exceeds our grasp. Deep practice is not simply about struggling; it's about seeking a particular struggle, which involves a cycle of distinct actions." (Dan Coyle, 2009)

In this way we can build conceptual nets that allow more knowledge and understanding to be caught by disadvantaged learners; levelling-up the playing field towards advantaged learners who drag thickly woven nets (conceptual fabric of the subject) that are steeped in cultural capital and understanding that collect much of what is available in classrooms (even where it is poorly taught). It is why advantaged still make progress with poor teaching and why poor teaching has a disproportionately negative impact on the progress of disadvantaged... (Helpfully the reverse is true, highly effective teaching secures greater progress for disadvantaged compared to advantaged).

Consistent, insightful formative assessment, that allows teachers to build conceptual understanding and to teach the next bit, disproportionately advantages disadvantaged learners. We need to consider particularly the pre-work and the structure of sequences of learning to address previous conceptual and knowledge gaps and at the same time consistently build learning with one eye on future learning.

Seek subject domain experts to inform, curate, collaborate and evolve the conceptual backbone of the curriculum (as an ever-onward); those who will know and understand the threads that weave vertically through the subject. Subject Communities and Subject Groups who together curate an efficient curriculum that enables all learners to secure the substantive concepts, disciplinary knowledge, meaning and understanding through the judicious selection of powerful knowledge. Where subject is celebrated and seen as an academic pursuit, where the discussion and talk is deep, expert and about how subjects are uniquely structured and organised, revealing the conceptual backbone essential for holding and accelerating learning over time...

" Communities of practice are groups of people who share a passion for something they do and want to learn how to do it better by interacting regularly." (Etienne Wenger)

Double down on and build deep understanding of the conceptual backbone with teachers and other colleagues. Teachers and colleagues often engaging in deep professional subject specific discussion and debate on the nuances and peculiarities of concept development over time. So that against this backcloth and architecture we can identify and judiciously select the necessary powerful knowledge, Tier 3 vocabulary, and secure understanding and meaning to allow all learners to know more, remember more and do more. We must create the conditions for collective endeavour, the pursuit of subject and collaboration; creating Communities of Practice in each subject/department, where teachers deliberately plan, sequence and play with pedagogy that will best enact the shared curriculum. A powerful alchemy is created when colleagues discuss practice on aligned curriculum across schools and evaluate often.

Teachers ensure that pupils embed key concepts in their long term memory and apply them fluently (Ofsted Framework)

Create much more space for teachers to debate, discuss, test and evaluate the pedagogy and teaching that is most efficacious in every way for the delivery of the specific subject necessary knowledge and conceptual framework; this can only be done in the consideration and shared planning of specific sequences of learning that fit the curriculum backbone and are an exploration of curriculum, assessment and pedagogy. We should deeply invest in Communities of Practice; the result of these curriculum conversations are our disadvantaged learners best chance of experiencing teaching that is efficient, effective and focused on what matters most.

Deeply consider and discuss Pedagogy. Teachers teach, presenters present. The careful selection of pedagogy in planning sequence and in response to following learning to meet need within learning episodes is the determining factor on the quality of the curriculum. Where the teacher habits, skills, strategies and approaches are highly aligned to the subject content and disciplinary nature of the subject we will accelerate learning, year-on-year. Whilst it is important to build habits and skills of teachers, particularly those that maximise learning time, secure routines and create climates that maximise attention and attending to learning, these are just the starting point of establishing the climate for learning. Those habits and skills that are deeply linked to the specific subject knowledge acquisition and for developing subject conceptual understanding and the disciplinary aspects of the subject will secure greater learning now and in the future. Matching the pedagogical choices to the particular curriculum item, subject nuance and specific desired learning over time.

Don't build Knowledge in a vacuum; curriculum is not a list it is a network. We learn and remember knowledge and build understanding in relation to what is already known and understood. We compare and contrast and attempt to resolve/assimilate what is new with what we already know.

"The importance of knowledge is not in question, but knowledge alone is not enough." (Mick Waters)

Stacking knowledge in isolation of context and concept slows learning. Acquiring knowledge and building understanding in context accelerates learning.

The large amount of school time spent in direct word study is not being spent on systemically becoming familiar with new knowledge domains, where word learning occurs naturally, and up to four times faster, without effort. (Hirsch, 2017)

...we should be wary of assuming stacking vocabulary in a list for some quick quizzing offers anything like the deep understanding and rich connections pupils need to make between words, phrases, concepts and big ideas. (Alex Quigley)

We also need to balancing another wicked problem: how do we judiciously introduce new knowledge and new understanding in and within context, without increasing noise and surplus information far beyond the conceptual scope of some disadvantaged learners?

We need to offer insight and examples to embed learning so that learners wrestle with co-occurrences, varied examples and contexts to secure connections and deepen understanding. Using analogy, explaining and modelling expertly so that we explore the multi-faceted richness experienced when growing up advantaged.

By paying attention to vocabulary growth at the micro level, we can better understand it, we can go to cultivating it and in so doing every child will be gifted a wealth of words." (Alex Quigley, 2018, Closing the Vocabulary Gap))

Seek rich retrieval . Retrieval practices should seek rich context based retrieval in preference to memory tests; teaching should seek to be memorable more than a test of memory. Engaging, rehearsing, exploring, discussing, explaining, defending... are far richer for memory than fact checks and quizzing.

It is inefficient to learn facts, vocab, knowledge in the absence of the conceptual fabric of the curriculum. Tier 3 vocabulary for example requires anchoring in learner's schema. Where necessary knowledge is built within context and where it is judiciously selected to reinforce the conceptual fabric of the curriculum backbone the new information is stickier and retained up to four time faster. Where this is linked to a strong narrative and mental model we have an opportunity to disproportionately enable disadvantaged learners to close gaps efficiently and more precisely.

Investing deeply in debate, discussion and oracy. We have an opportunity to accelerate the learning of those experiencing the most disadvantage through effective oracy practice. As we support our learners to discover and use their voice as part of their learning and as a result of their learning, we enable them to develop more deeply th eir own sense of belonging and sense of self, with significant impact on mental health and well-being - not as a tokenistic sidebar, but as an embedded pedagogy upon which the curriculum rides. The very thinking needed as children journey through our curriculum can in many cases most effectively be done as part of dialogic learning, using subject as the 'grammar' and talk as the vehicle to develop critical thought. (Neil Phillipson, Dialogic Education: Mastering Core Concepts). Understanding that the development of individual and collective oracy curriculum is essential for accelerating advantage for disadvantaged learners.

Tell Stories to tap into what makes us human . Dan Willingham highlights that, "our brain privileges story." Fortunately, stories exist across the whole curriculum and yet our enactment of the curriculum can often revert to something far colder and transactional.

"...stories perform a fundamental cognitive function... when we encounter a complex issue and try to understand it, what we look for is not consistent and reliable facts, but a consistent and comprehensible story." (from Out of the Wreckage, George Monbiot, 2017)

There are many things that attract and hold the attention of brains. Storytellers engage a number of neural processes that evolved for a variety of reasons and are waiting to be played like instruments in an orchestra: moral outrage, unexpected change, status play, specificity, curiosity and so on. By understanding them, we can more easily create stories (curriculum and sequences) that are gripping, profound, emotional and original. (Will Storr, 2019)

Tell stories about words . Etymology offers the opportunity to discover the roots of words that build stories around each word that makes them stickier (connection-wise) in the brain and offers further capacity for future learning. Mary Myatt insightfully highlights that this taps the curiosity of children (something innate in humans) and makes them feel clever. This disproportionately benefits disadvantage who go deeper into the learning and secure the necessary knowledge that will close the disadvantaged gap as well as giving status to learners, empowering them and give them the ticket to culture.

Seek to support learners to use Tier 3 vocabulary with the ease, confidence and fluency that more befits Tier 2 vocabulary. A significant passport not just to the world but also to conceptual understanding that creates the holding baskets for future learning.

Provoke, even anger learners, make them care about learning. Curriculum that provokes, that challenges is one that is much more likely to persuade the brain that this is important enough to encode, that this is important enough to release chemicals to secure connections and wrap myelin, that this is important to me and my life and my future. Curriculum that has provoking questions/hypotheses/conjectures, demands a response and tap emotions. Emotionally linked experiences, both positive and negative, are encoded much more quickly and secured in the longer term; if learning through the curriculum feels more like a quest or a mission it is more likely to be both coherent, memorable and remembered.

Make it irresistibly important, give a sense of urgency. We learn what we care about. Cognitive science has highlighted the chemical changes that happen when we code new learning. If the content of what is to be learnt is not deemed important enough, if it is not compelling enough to think hard about, it does not trigger the emotional/chemical response to connect and encode it.

Inside the brain, this relevance is expressed through widely reaching systems that release chemicals called neuromodulators... releasing with high specificity (to) allow change occur (in the brain) only at specific places and times. ... The presence of acetylcholine... tells it to change... they increase plasticity in the target areas. When they're inactive, there's little or no plasticity (learning). (David Eagleman, 2020)

So when we attend to something, whether by free will, a burst of emotion, under coercion or by finding meaning in it, we hugely increase our chances of remembering it. (Alex Beard, 2018)

Clearly teaching is not about performance, but it is about moving learners to care enough to trigger chemical and attention cues so that new information is encoded and wrestled with. To this end making learning irresistible, provocative and conflicting is vital.

We learn what we attend to, what we think hard about. Unless the classroom climate enables such focus, particularly for disadvantaged learners who may become distracted in class (because if you bring less into the classroom, or you have other things on the mind, it is harder), and by events out of class (because we need both psychological safety as well as being able to park 'the multi-distractions of life' at the door), then learning is slowed and the gap widens. We learn when we attend to the information at hand, when we enhance it into focus, released neurotransmitters to encode, create connections, wrap connections and stick long enough at it to secure connections.

It is my fear there are a great many struggling children who believe they are colluding in a game in which their role is to be physically present in a classroom and to make a pretence they are learning in it, but that nobody really believes anything meaningful is ever accomplished and this doesn't really matter. (Ben Newmark)

Make learning compelling and irresistibly important. We are competing for attention and convincing other humans (disadvantaged learners) that this is too important to be ignored. Allied with the award of status across the class and judicious issuing of small moments of prestige; learners feel valued, empowered to learn more and to take risks.

You couldn't learn something you didn't pay attention to. Yet the process of paying attention to something was complex, and not always under our control. It could be enhanced... in a few ways: things that created an emotional reaction were much more likely to be remembered; repetition helped a little; wanting to remember didn't help much; reflecting on meaning had a positive effect, such as knowing where something fitted in a story or schema, whether personal or general." (Alex Beard, 2018)

What if learning and our understanding of the world is more catastrophic than we think? Our view of what we are capable of, of how we understand the world, a subject, a concept often progresses catastrophically and not in a linear way. Once we have seen what we are capable of (or see the world differently) we are never the same. Teachers and the curriculum should create fertile grounds for this insight, born out of the curriculum, opportunity, feedback, modeling, explaining etc.

Great teaching create serendipity fields for all learners, but particularly disadvantaged learners who need to have experiences and supported opportunities that grow and intertwine understanding that is the structure for powerful knowledge that needs to accelerate learning if we are to close the gap.

Whilst the world is an increasingly challenging place to be a child, we have an opportunity as educators to address the embarrassing inequality that exists and work together to close the disadvantage gap. Our collective capacity and shared expertise applied to the development and enactment of curriculum is our best bet, or set of linked bets, to advantage disadvantaged learners. This is the key lever that accumulates advantage year-on-year and is best placed to privilege those who are presently or previously experiencing disadvantage.

Our best hope is to adopt a laser like focus on disadvantage. We can then shine a light on those left behind at school and find ways to ignite their minds. (Lee Elliott Major, 2022)

Dan Nicholls | February 2022

This is significantly influenced by the insight and expertise of colleagues from across the Cabot Learning Federation.
Pre-reading for the South West Disadvantage Network | 18th February 2022

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Closing the disadvantage gap | Curriculum as the lever

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Closing the disadvantage gap requires educators to deeply consider the central and critical role that curriculum and the enactment of curriculum needs to play as the key lever on accumulating advantage year-on-year. This seeks to privilege those who are presently or previously experiencing disadvantage. (and all children).

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Twenty years ago this month I had an interview for a place on an English PGCE. As part of the interview I was asked to look at a poem and come prepared to talk about how I would teach it. I don't remember much about the experience, in all honesty, but I can vividly remember the part where I was asked to bring to life Tom Leonard's Six O Clock News, with its phonetic spelling of Glaswegian dialect, and the discussion that ensued about class, the status of language and Standard English. I remember talking about code switching, about the powerful weapon that is language by which we can be either emancipated or oppressed. I remember talking about the fact that teenagers love a conspiracy, and that my teaching of that poem would aim to open up with them the dialogue about the nature of class, dialect and power. I can remember speaking with passion about the fact that I wanted to use my life to help young people to discover their voices and to be alert to how others around them were using theirs, having influence upon them through mastery of language.

"I don't want them to be fooled and pushed around all their lives - I want them to understand how language is used on them and I want them to know how to wield that power for themselves - and to do something good with it."

I remember the beginnings of a smile flitting across the face of the tutor as he caught the eye of the other panel member and feeling that I had probably said the right thing - which was helpful, because on this hung the beginnings of a career first as an English teacher and then as a school leader that has throughout been underpinned by this deeply held belief.

Taking the lead on our collaborative work around disadvantage across a trust of 12,000 children has brought into sharp relief for me the concept of language, power and voice. The launch of our more focused work together on this topic occurred through a 20-minute film bringing together the voices of young people experiencing disadvantage, talking about what helps and what hinders them at school. It also included the voices of adults who had experienced disadvantage as younger people - and together it has been these voices that have been amplified as we have worked together to address the insidious effects of disadvantage on educational attainment in our trust. It has been important to us that before we have begun to work on behalf of disadvantage, we have truly listened to the voices of disadvantage, taking the lead from them in our work as an organisation.

Three Key Areas

Our trust-wide disadvantage strategy focuses upon three critical areas: oracy, belonging and Benevolent Childhood Experiences. These themes were chosen because together they thread through and around the school and life experiences of children who matter to us. It is a painful truth that they seem to matter less to an inequitable society. By working intentionally on their sense of belonging to themselves, their communities and their schools, by counteracting adverse experiences with positive ones and by creating environments that nurture talk as a powerful tool for learning, we can equip them to navigate this profoundly sad truth, and ultimately to change it.

Hashi Mohamed, in his book People Like Us: What It Takes to Make it in Modern Britain, powerfully outlines this inequality and the alienating effects of social immobility. It is still, to date, the best book I have read on the topic. I cannot recommend highly enough that you read it. It will challenge you, entertain you, break your heart and steel your resolve.

In his book he describes a time when he was homeless aged 18 and engaging with the charity Centrepoint in Soho, London. At the time the system involved proactively calling around hostels to secure a place for the night, for the next two weeks, then for the next six months and so on. He noticed that:

"Many of these young people lacked the confidence to make the calls in the first place, or to insist that they should be considered, or they couldn't explain why they needed the bed in a way that made sense of the busy people on the other end of the phone. Despite the fact that they were vulnerable, they weren't getting anywhere."

This rings so true with other experiences, for example with the extraordinary organisation that is the Citizens Advice Bureau - it is often the case that those most in need of support and advocacy are those least able to articulate it, to know who to ask for help or to be able to explain exactly what it is that they need. The volunteers of the Citizens Advice Bureau work tirelessly to reach the people who need the service the most, like many charitable organisations, and it is often the case that the very people who need them the most are unaware of the advocacy awaiting them; in many cases they are unable, at least at first, to articulate what it is they need.

This long, silent shadow of disadvantage follows young people everywhere, and without being better equipped through a strong oracy education, it is an impossible spectre for them to shake off.

On the Radio 4 Woman's Hour programme some months ago, a woman was telling her story of achieving a conviction for rape for the man who attacked her. At that time there was around a 1 in 70 chance of prosecution for reported rape, and a much lower conviction rate. In her description of the process of going to court, the woman spoke about how her own level of education, her ability to narrate the events, her own eloquence and articulacy were intrinsically linked with the success of her case, and that for hundreds of other women subjected to the same horror, their weaker oracy would stand in the way of them seeing justice. This stems not only from not having the words to say but also not having the experience and hence the belief that they would be listened to, taken seriously and acted upon: just one example of the deep systemic inequality at play.

Cross reference this with the words of a seven year old attending School 21 in East London:

"What makes me enjoy talking most is that everybody's listening to you, and you're part of the world, and you feel respected and important".

The difference is stark: on one hand people can be subjected to untold traumas and find themselves at a loss as to whether or how to seek justice - on the other, it is possible even at a young age to recognise the power of voice, the connectedness it promises, and the sense of personal well-being that comes from owning it. For the sake of any of our children experiencing trauma either as a child or later as an adult, we need to instill in them this strong sense of personal value, lest they need it to advocate for themselves in any of the parts of the system that currently seem inaccessible to them. Feeling respected and important is a critical factor in developing a sense of belonging - which is in itself one of the key protective factors for children at risk.

Oracy as a tool for engendering belonging

Understanding the extent of children's belonging is something we have begun to be more intentional about as a trust in recent months, and building upon what we know to increase that sense of belonging both at cohort and individual level is an important element of our disadvantage strategy.

As performance coach Owen Eastwood outlines:

"To feel a sense of belonging is to feel accepted, to feel seen and to feel included by a group of people, believing that we fit in, trusting that we will be protected by them. To not feel belonging is to experience the precarious and insecure sense of an outsider."

The effects of this ostracism can be catastrophic, and can lead to some of the most harmful behaviours. Working with young people at risk of Child Criminal and Sexual Exploitation, and with those involved in serious violence, it is abundantly clear that what lies at the heart of their devastating life choices is an intense desire to belong in a system and a world that has repeatedly told them that they do not. Their deep sense of rejection is all too often linked to their inability to express themselves, to make their wishes known or to have influence on others with anything but force. The impact upon mental health and well-being cannot be underestimated - and yet development of oracy can be a protective factor.

The Oracy All Party Parliamentary Group Inquiry points to an urgent and pressing need, post-lockdown, to prioritise oracy in schools. Within the report one teacher comments that: "Oracy heightens a community's ability to belong to each other, whilst valuing individuality. It makes every voice matter; these processes are built on the principles of a democratic society."

This crucial element of childhood experience is formative, and has a greater impact for those experiencing disadvantage than others. It is for this reason that we need to take more care with this cohort. As Dr. Fiona Pienaar of Place2be outlines:

"The connection between oracy and well-being is crucial and while there are many other risk factors that can impact on a child and young person's well-being, oracy is one that we can turn into a protective factor... Unless we give oracy and its connection to well-being the recognition and attention it should have in education, we will continue to have children and young people who are likely to develop speech, language and communication difficulties, display challenging behaviours in their efforts to be understood and, in some cases, embark on a trajectory of lifelong mental health and well-being challenges... The fact that research indicates that over 60 per cent of young offenders have difficulties with speech, language and communications should alert us to the urgency of the situation."

The situation is indeed urgent. It was urgent before the Covid pandemic forced children into isolation. It was urgent before the inequalities in our society were deepened. For some groups of children, deprivation of oracy is yet another anchor preventing them from achieving the heights of their inner potential.

Who needs oracy education the most?

It is interesting that the APPG Inquiry explicitly references those experiencing disadvantage and those with additional needs as being the most in need of effective oracy approaches: in answering the question "Who needs oracy education most?" the response from the APPG argues that: "Oracy education matters for all children and young people, the benefits are accretive and go beyond addressing deficits, but our Inquiry found that oracy education can have a disproportionate impact on the learning and life chances of some children and young people for whom the blight of an absence of oracy in their education will also be most damaging.

"Research consistently finds that children from low-income homes start school with lower language levels than their more advantaged peers, and these gaps grow as children move through school. Of the children who persistently experienced poverty, 75 per cent arrive at school below average in language development. Around 50 per cent of children in some areas of deprivation begin school with delayed language. The pandemic has also widened the language gap.

"Research shows a greater focus on oracy can enable disadvantaged students to fulfil their potential and narrow the attainment gap between them and more advantaged peers. Speech, language and communication experts contributing to the Inquiry highlighted how universal oracy provision, complementing targeted and specialist provision, has the potential to help transform schooling for children with these needs. Oracy can improve access to and subsequent inclusion in education for children with SLCN and with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)."

It is clear that for children experiencing economic disadvantage and for those with SEND, oracy development is a key enabler. It is also, fortunately, something that can and should be provided at cohort level so that all children benefit. If we recognise that in many areas there is also a link between economic disadvantage and race, we can assume that by developing children's oracy across the board, we are also adding to a growing body of work which seeks to eradicate racial inequality too. Even aside from the educational advantages of providing children from different ethnic backgrounds with this vital tool for learning, the impact of harnessing voice, exploring personal identity, being heard, respected and valued cannot be underestimated. If you are growing up in a society where racism is endemic, it matters even more that there are safe spaces to clear your throat and rehearse your use of your own powerful voice. All schools have a duty to be those safe spaces, and to help young people traversing the fault lines of race and identity in the UK today, schools must understand that oracy education is simply more important for some groups.

From the Inquiry there is a strong and sustained argument for better oracy in our schools and a higher prioritisation of oracy across the system. It is helpful to be cognisant of this as we invest in oracy as part of our planned work for this academic year and beyond - it is a sign that we have 'placed our bets' in exactly the places where they are needed at this time.

Equity through oracy in the curriculum

Whilst curriculum is for us our best bet in terms of enabling children from a variety of backgrounds to progress and ultimately to realise their agency, oracy is one of the defining pedagogical approaches that will enable this. By harnessing the power of talk in the classroom we connect young people with a mighty lifelong weapon, their voice, which in more privileged settings the world over is already being nourished. Private schools are renowned for their focus on performance and debate as a critical element of curricular experience: famously there are more theatres in private schools in London than there are in the West End. The corridors of power are lined with the images of the elite, passed back and forth by generations who have had the privilege of similar experience - and one of the most powerful tools at their disposal is their oratorial skill.

"When I take our students on the debating circuit... they will largely be surrounded by children from independent [schools...]. I'm on a mission to make sure that children like ours in schools like ours have access to what is essentially the language of power," Geoff Barton, Headteacher, King Edward VI School (now General Secretary, ACSL)

It does seem perverse that such a powerful weapon as voice and the ability to use it should have become the privilege of those with the greatest power base to start with. Oracy is free - every child has a voice, figuratively and (for the overwhelming majority) literally - and yet in the schools with the least resource it is a scarcity. Conversely in the schools with the most resource at their disposal, oracy is such a foundational factor that it is a feature for which those organisations have become known. The disadvantaged and the disenfranchised have been shortchanged for too long.

In his theory of 'triple jeopardy', Dr Brian Mole asserts that children experiencing disadvantage have three areas of threat:

1. less extensive sets of understanding into which to fit new learning;

2. less practice at changing those sets of understandings to accommodate new learning;

3. lack of language development that would allow these accommodations to be made.

It is therefore not just the curriculum that matters, but also the curricular experience and the oracy and language development that underpins it that together will have the most impact for those starting with the greatest deficit. A focus on oracy through our curriculum is the best way to make the difference to the children who need it most within what is a limited timeframe in their lives. Sadly for a small proportion of children, their lives are cut short at school age or shortly after - for these children especially, school needs to be exceptional. National statistics would tell us that the lives of those in more socioeconomically disadvantaged areas are on average shorter, which means this period is proportionally more significant to this group too - another reason, if we needed any, to focus on getting it right.

Here links the concept of Benevolent Childhood Experiences. Mole provides a critique of the popular practice of codifying and addressing gaps in learning through targeted catch-up programmes and 'detailing the deficit'. Whilst these have their place, they are not fully addressing the issues at hand. Instead, he argues: "If some children have not enjoyed the rich range of experiences that would enable them to develop the more complex neural networks that make learning easy, then they need those experiences. The Sutton Trust has even identified them - they need the visits, the days out, the trips to theatres and museums, the conversations over meals, the being read to, the being surrounded by books, the having hobbies - all of this. These experiences will challenge their schemata and give them practice in changing and extending them. This will be done not in an artificial, theoretical and didactic classroom-bound way but in practical situations where there is emotional investment in learning and first-hand experiences that shape that learning and enabled a schema to be adjusted."

Oracy and Benevolent Childhood Experiences

Our approach to oracy and to the joy-filled learning that our shared curriculum promises is linked to more intentional creation of Benevolent Childhood Experiences for good reason - because even pre-pandemic these were the kinds of experiences that were off limits to many of those with lower socio-economic status: post-pandemic there is an even greater urgency in relation to recovering for all our children, and particularly our most disadvantaged, the lost ground of experience that underpins schemata and develops a child's ability as a learner. Some of our oracy work is built exclusively on this, with opportunities constructed for children to perform as both a development tool and a Benevolent Childhood Experience in itself.

As a Headteacher I was proud to introduce to the school an engineering programme in partnership with Airbus in Bristol, which provided Year 9 students with the opportunity to build and fly a plane, working over several months with a team of engineers - a project that has only strengthened over time in its impact and appeal. At the inaugural assembly I was acutely aware of the disadvantage in my cohort, and at the likelihood that some of the most disadvantaged students in the room counting themselves out of an opportunity that was absolutely targeted at them. I knew this would happen from experience - in spite of a great deal of work over a number of years, it was still the case that for many students experiencing disadvantage there was an automatic assumption that new/different/extra experiences just were not for them. I recall stating in the assembly that "I do mean you, I am speaking to you" throughout and labouring the point a number of times. At the end of the assembly, a young man hung back - a boy with plenty of academic ability and arguably the most disadvantaged in his cohort. He was living through things that I wouldn't wish for any adult to face, let alone a child. He often brought that weather into school, a place where he could be his authentic self and where in so doing he often clashed with our reasonable boundaries. We loved him, of course.

"I know you said you did, Miss, but you didn't really mean me, did you?" was the question he had been compelled to ask. He explained that he thought his behaviour would be a barrier and we agreed it would be unlikely that he would behave poorly on the programme if he applied. Which he would.

He went on to be the most successful participant in the programme that year, was talent spotted by the engineering team and went on to work at Airbus as part of an apprenticeship programme.

It took repeated invitations, both at cohort level and at individual level, for him to apply. The process of application relied both on written communication and on the ability to articulate motivation and candidature. Our young man prepared well and performed well. It was a risk to assume he would behave well, as this wasn't necessarily in line with our experience of him. But like Michaelangelo's David, the engineer in him was always inside the rock, waiting to be discovered. It was our job to let him out.

I'm proud of this story, but it comes with a significant dose of realism and sadness: I know in this case, the outcome was good. How many more children do I not know about, who didn't raise their hand, who assumed an opportunity wasn't for them, who were never presented with the opportunity in the first place? How many children had an inkling of interest but not the words to express it? I cannot answer that question: I can only hope that the verve I carried into my PGCE interview was carried enough into my headships that I made a bigger difference than might otherwise have been made, and that I laid the foundations for others to build upon. What I do know is that without experiences to offer like the one outlined above, less difference would certainly have been made.

Oracy as pedagogy

In 2014 the World Health Organisation stated that: "School may be the last opportunity to help children and young people develop oracy skills to the standard that is sufficient for them to realise their own abilities, cope with the normal stresses of life, work productively and fruitfully, and make a contribution to their community" and this in and of itself might be considered reason enough to prioritise this within our pedagogy.

There is a significant challenge therein. Language is such a powerful cultural and psychological tool that is acquired and developed at different ages, stages and paces - this presents us as teachers with some significant hurdles to overcome. We do generally have a strong collective understanding that we are all teachers of literacy. As teachers of oracy we can feel convinced of the value of the work but perhaps less skilled or expert at its execution. Metacognition, self-regulation and reasoning are all critical thinking skills that have emerged over time as those that are vital to children's ability to learn, and whilst children's experiences and capabilities vary enormously, research has proven time and again that teacher's interactions with children can significantly improve these capabilities: all are strengthened through talk. In our teaching we know that we should be teaching children to talk and teaching them through talk, developing a greater understanding of dialogic approaches as we bring our curriculum to life and encourage our children to be challenged by it, to do battle with the concepts, to wrestle with their own assumptions. Professor Rupert Wegerif writes: "Conceptual mastery is not just about getting new information from a book or the whiteboard; it is about seeing the world in a new way." We need to carry into our thinking about curriculum the Martin Robinson approach that: "This is the best that's been thought and said - and you need to know it - but it might be wrong, and it certainly isn't finished."

Empowering and enabling our children to traverse and grapple with our curriculum, to shape it and to reason with it, is the only thing that will make our curriculum effective. Of course, there is particular knowledge that must be grasped for children to have something to talk about but even with the process of learning this knowledge, dialogic teaching has a place: as a teacher, a good grasp of this is crucial. Vygotsky suggested that social interaction is the origin of all 'higher order thinking': "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first on the social level and later on the individual level; first between people and then inside the child... All the higher order functions originate as actual relations between people."

Critically, dialogic thinking goes beyond what might be achieved in school - it shapes the way we encounter 'the other' and how we engage with it. Laura D'Olimpio of Australia's University of Notre Dame asserts "...the identity that we should be teaching children to recognise is an identity that involves 'recognising humanity in the stranger and the other' and responding humanely to the human in every cultural form."

It might be argued that the impact for individuals, families, community and society is too great if we fail to teach these skills well. Inequality exists and has deepened through the pandemic. Racism, misogyny and bias exist and are at times undetected. As we equip our children to be better at recognising humanity in the 'other' we are actively providing them with what is needed for personal growth and well-being, and at a societal level we are providing the tools to address inequality. Faced with such a bleak post-pandemic picture, surely it is the very least we can do for our children to hand them the tools for the job, even if the manual remains unwritten.

So why oracy?

Because we know that three quarters of children who experience persistent poverty throughout their early years start school without the language skills they need for learning.

Because the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) highlights in at least two of the Articles, the oracy privileges that all children should enjoy, including ensuring that those who are "capable of forming their own views be given the right to express those views freely... and that they be given due weight (Article 12), and that each child should "have the right to freedom of expression, including freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds", including orally (Article 13).

Because we believe that children should have a sense of self, a sense of place in the world and to understand their own agency.

Because of the top 10 skills needed in the UK workforce as highlighted by Deloitte in 2016, seven are strongly rooted in oracy (oral comprehension, oral expression, deductive reasoning, critical thinking, speaking, monitoring and active listening).

Because language is power, and the command of language enables power to be utilised and also to be deconstructed.

Because it supports and promotes positive mental health and well-being, which is in itself a protective factor.

Because it fosters a sense of belonging and connectedness that our children desperately need.

And because through oracy, the intent of our curriculum, written exclusively with our children at its heart, can truly be realised.

Hashi Mohamed argues that: "Once we get to a place where young people are trained, prepped, pushed and encouraged to be articulate, where they can deploy a wide vocabulary with a clarity of thought, and are armed with new and exciting ideas, then we might be in a position to reshape the current linguistic landscape in favour of social, cultural and ethnic diversity. Perhaps then we will have found a way of neutralising prejudices instead of playing right into them. Perhaps we will have conquered another corner of the social mobility story and moved one step closer to a more equal society."

When I stepped into my PGCE interview I carried with me great hopes, intense passion and a great deal of naivety. I believed I could change the world (and I still do). I had acquired these things through a life of relative privilege and an oracy-rich education. Over 20 years my resolve has been tested and I have learned a great deal about just how hard this work is - and yet I believe those things no less fervently today than I did then. The difference now is that I have experience and evidence and stories that prove those beliefs.

We have chosen oracy as a key strategy for all children because it will benefit all children. We know that those who will make the greatest gains as a result of a strong oracy education are those experiencing the most disadvantage, and this aligns entirely with our reason for existing as a trust.

We have come together at this point in time and around this particular priority for the good of the children to whom we have made a commitment. They rely on us to ensure that the years they have in school equip them for the years they will spend in the world beyond it, not simply in terms of their contribution to a workforce but as agents in society, as whole people, connected to themselves and their communities with significant spheres of influence. For this they need words, concepts, confidence and a voice to speak them.

Maya Angelou puts it remarkably simply: "Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning."

Through our work, may all our children realise the power of their own voice.
Six O'Clock News poem

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The Power of Voice: Oracy as a Tool for Equity through Education - Queen Street Group

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Lead Author: Sally Apps, Executive Principal Cabot Learning Federation Twenty years ago this month I had an interview for a place on an English PGCE. As part of the interview I was asked to look at a poem and come prepared to talk about how I would teach it.

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In this instalment, host Alex Quigley is joined by Kirsten Mould and expert guests including: Dr Rebecca Montacute, Head of Research and Policy, Sutton Trust Marc Rowland, Pupil Premium Adviser, Unity School's Partnership Gill Fearns, Director, Lancashire Research School They discuss how to support for pupils from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

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Sustained Shared Thinking overview

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